*This article is inspired by a CNet article, available here.

*This article deals more with why promoted post is a terrible idea to make money. For why nobody would want to pay to promote their posts, check out my classmate Amanda’s article.

Starting this earlier this month, Facebook started experimenting with personal promoted posts. The idea is that people who really want their status updates to be seen (i.e. an important announcement) will be willing to pay $7 to “promote” their posts. Upon paying, the person’s particular post will be prioritized in the person’s friends’ news feed. This is part of Facebook’s strategy to find new ways to make money other than advertisements, which are not working well in the mobile space. While this feature makes sense for pages, it is a terrible idea for personal profiles.

Let’s start with a little background. Facebook’s primary revenue comes from advertisements. Although half of Facebook’s over a billion users access Facebook from mobile devices, it is no secret that Facebook has been struggling to make money from mobile users. On a computer browser, it is easy to unobtrusively add an ad tab to the right of the news feed. The same cannot be said for a mobile device; the screen is just too small. As a result, Facebook has been experimenting with new ways to make money from mobile users. While it is totally understandable that Facebook as a company needs to make money, allowing people to pay for their posts to be prioritized is not the way to go.

Personal promoted posts breaks the very purpose of Facebook’s news feed. Facebook wants the users to trust its formula for delivering “top stories.” Based on some complicated algorithm that considers the amount of comments, the amount of likes, and the time the post was posted, Facebook will automatically present the most relevant posts to the users. By allowing promoted posts, suddenly, the news feed becomes a collection of who pays the most amount of money instead of relevant posts.

Most users do not even want promoted posts. According to a survey by Sterne Agee, 83.6% of Facebook users are not willing to pay a single penny for Facebook. In fact, only 1.2% are willing to pay more than $5, much less Facebook’s $7 pricing. In my own opinion, there are two primary types of message that general users would want to promote. The first is a message to a select group of people. Facebook’s Group feature does a much better job at this. That leaves the second type, which is an announcement to the general public. The problem with the logic that people will pay is, if the person and the announcement are important enough, people will end up liking and sharing the post, eliminating the need to pay. That is how Facebook works. When one sees a post he likes, he can either like it or share it. SHARING is the heart and soul of Facebook…or maybe it isn’t anymore. This brings me to my final and most important point.

Promoted post itself is not nearly as dangerous as the precedence it sets up. It shows that Facebook as we know it is changing, and not for the better. If it becomes the norm that users must pay to have their posts prioritized, how long will it be till Facebook starts charging for its services in general? This act of monetary incentive is the very sign that Facebook is transforming from the “cool” service it used to be to just another corporate giant.

Nobody is stopping Facebook from making money. In fact, we all want Facebook to make money so that it may continue to serve us with its awesome service. However, there is a line, and personal promoted post crosses it. Facebook should not lose sight of its mission, which is “to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.” There are other, more effective ways to make money. For example, Facebook has been including mobile ads right into the users’ news feed. While this does disrupt the news feed, the disruption is subtle. Users see the ad. Advertisers are happy. Facebook gets paid. Period.